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Friday, August 4, 2017

"5 important cli-fi movies that will scare the pants off you" - a Thrillist piece by Toronto film critic Tina Hassannia

"5 important cli-fi movies that will scare the pants off you" - [a Thrillist.com piece by Toronto film critic Tina Hassannia]

After the ''went-viral'' Doomsday article in the NYMag by David Wallace-Wells last month, with over 3 million page views, [OR SO THEY SAY,] a Toronto film critic named Tina Hassannia has posted a very good reaction shot to David's downer article, in that he never once mentioned the power of cli-fi novels or movies to help fight the fight of climate apathy, and TINA rises to the occasion here with a very good piece headlined "5 important cli-fi movies to scare the pants off you" or something like that. READ IT here: re ''5 Terrifyingly Real Movies Where the Earth Takes Revenge''

If you haven’t already read "The Uninhabitable Earth," the haunting and widely-shared ''New York'' magazine article by the hyphenated David Wallace-Wells, you’re probably feeling fine.

Blissfully ignorant. Happy, even. The article paints a not-so-pretty picture of how things will shake down over the next century as climate change alters Earthly ecology, where food shortages lead to massive starvation, temperatures rise so high the sun will literally cook people, and polluted air strangles us to death. One sci-fi-sounding factoid reminds readers of ancient diseases trapped underneath melting Alaskan and Siberian ice, or as Wallace-Wells puts it, "an abridged history of devastating human sickness, left out like egg salad in the Arctic sun."

More often than not, cli-fi movies set boundaries to assuage any fears that its premises are realistic. They often take place in a far-off future that is reassuringly unfamiliar, employ far-fetched technology that we can only dream of, feature a small but cataclysmic event that preposterously ruins the whole planet, or end happily as the Earth magically returns to its pre-disastrous state, as if nature can be fixed with the flick of a switch.

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In reality, climate change is more slow-moving and complicated -- a single natural disaster can’t wipe out the entire planet -- but it’s also more rapidly advancing than we think; humans have been roaming the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, yet half of our carbon footprint has been stomped into Earth in the last three decades alone. There’s an argument to be made that Hollywood should strive to be more eco-realistic. More so than finger-wagging documentaries (sorry, Al Gore), blockbusters reach the masses and, in theory, can casually compel uninvested people to take action.

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Here are five cli-fi movies that should scare you in an entirely new way:

1 .....The Last Winter (2006)

2 ......Happy Feet Two (2011)

3 ......Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

4 .........The Fire Next Time (1993)

5 ..........The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

NOTE: Tina Hassannia is a writer based in Toronto. Her work appears at the Village Voice, RogerEbert.com, and the National Post Arts. Follow her on Twitter @tinahassannia